


Five Ways Crowley and Aziraphale Say ‘I Love You’ Without Saying It and All the Ways They Just Say It

by MaxSpencer



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dining At The Savoy, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, They Love Each Other (Also The Sky Is Blue)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 10:46:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19149457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaxSpencer/pseuds/MaxSpencer
Summary: What it says on the tin.





	1. One: The Bookshop

London was just coming into being as it would be when the Antichrist inhabited it and Crowley had gone too far (again) and his angel was angry with him.* Crowley hadn't meant to upset him, he never did. Sharing lodgings, it turned out, had been a mistake at this juncture. Aziraphale having to dive behind things when hell came knocking had grown old quickly. Crowley didn't mind the opposite situation but it was beginning to wear thin.

Aziraphale needed space from his demon and Crowley needed space from Aziraphale’s books.

It so happened, probably through not so divine intervention, that a shiny new little bookshop was looking for its first tenant.

Crowley had offered the landlord an obscene amount of money and bought the building.#

In hindsight creeping up behind Aziraphale and blindfolding him by surprise hadn't been one of Crowley's better ideas. In fact, it had earned him a black eye.

* * *

 *As much as an angel can be angry, which presents, in human terms, as frustrated and a little bit miffed.

+Crowley hadn't intended it but he supposed he must have done his luck wasn't that good. Then again he, an actual demon, had fallen in love with Aziraphale, an actual angel, and vice versa so you never know.

#This seemed like less hassle than coming up with new names (and bonds) every half century or so. This had turned out to be an excellent decision because rent from their other tenants paid for everything they ever needed for several centuries, and the building that finally replaced it did so for several more.


	2. Two: Crowley’s Hair

Something Aziraphale knew but Crowley did not was that Crowley's hair had always been scarlet, even when he'd been an angel. Everyone, Crowley included assumed it was a demon thing. Demons only remembered certain things about their angelic lives. Crowley didn't, for instance, remember that his name was Malachi or that he and Aziraphale had known each other well before The Rebellion. Crowley didn't know the pang of hurt he was responsible for when he hadn't recognised Aziraphale up on Eden's wall.

Crowley had always had scarlet hair of fluid length. It had been just a bit too red with the angelic colour scheme. With the demonic palette though, it did something to Aziraphale. Especially in that long, vaguely scraggly wave he'd had at Eden.

Aziraphale loved Crowley's hair. He loved playing with it, he loved the way it felt, the way it smelled. When Aziraphale was particularly stressed* Crowley would grow it to nearly waist length and let him brush it out and braid it.+ Crowley pretended not to enjoy it.#

* * *

 *It depended entirely on the century, of course, but this happened once every century or so. It's only sometimes Crowley's fault.

+Ordinarily the hair of divine beings doesn't require manual grooming but Aziraphale is a bit obsessed with Crawley’s hair.

#Aziraphale would know better, even if he hadn't kept it like that for several days on several occasions, the most recent being in 1998.


	3. Three: My Dear

If it had ever been used as a pet name, they'd used it.* Darling. Love. Dear. Angel. Pumpkin. Baby. Foul Fiend. Babe. Biscuit. Honey. That sort of thing. They'd invented the concept, in fact. If heaven (or hell) ever found this out Aziraphale and Crowley would have been in more trouble than they'd been in for the whole foiling-the-divine-plan thing. Thankfully their respective head offices were not very observant.

* * *

 *And a few that nobody else had ever used. There were a few very specific exceptions.


	4. Four: The Arrangement

It is no small feat for an angel to perform a demonic deed. It's no small feat for a demon to perform an angelic one either.

Even when they did their own deeds they’d travel together, share a cabin. On one notable occasion they’d been tasked with travelling on a ship to Australia. The same specific ship, in order to meddle several times en route. Both head offices were aware that both their emissaries were on the same ship. They were quite content in their beliefs that, on what was a very long voyage on a very small ship, their respective operatives were unaware of each other’s presence. Celestial beings were exceedingly dim in that respect.

Only one of them could have gone and done both in accordance with The Arrangement but the voyage was long and the company was nice.*

Crowley had been sent to provoke a massacre, the very thought made him sick to the stomach. Aziraphale was very proud of him for only making it _look_ as though there was a massacre. Hed whispered into the ears of some landowners.

_All you have to do is say there was an attack. It’s rubbish getting impaled by spears. Amo’s expensive._

Before he knew it there were records of an angry mob of rich white fellas attacking a group of natives of indeterminate size, resulting in an indeterminate number of dead natives. In actuality, no blood had been spilled. The story was passed down on both sides that it had though.

All the rich white fellas had a dinner party with an angel and a demon instead.

* * *

 *Crowley and Aziraphale made a little holiday out of it. They’d enjoyed the voyage so much they’d done it on the way back as well.


	5. Five: Ineffability

There was only one thing Crowley didn’t know about Aziraphale, only one thing his Angel hadn’t told him*. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. He’d been tasked not to by God herself, directly. Subtle hints were a grey area.

In order to understand why Crowley wasn’t allowed to reveal this one aspect of himself to anyone some context is needed. At the end of THe Rebellion God decreed (via The Metatron) that knowledge of the angels The Fallen had once been was forbidden, even to themselves. Lucifer was the only exception. There were three beings exempt from this. God herself, Lucifer and The Keeper, an angel whose identity was known only by God herself.

The Keeper, retains the forbidden knowledge of The Fallen. Most of the angels assumed The Metatron was also The Keeper. The Metatron had, after long deliberation come to the conclusion that The Keeper was Gabriel. Gabriel thought it was Michael. Michael was convinced it was Gabriel.

They were all wrong. The Keeper was, as may be obvious at this point, Aziraphale. He was a good choice. There were hundreds of suspects. Aziraphale was not one of them. Not even Crowley thought it was Aziraphale. If he had, he might have picked up on some of his angel’s hints and inadvertent clues. +

Atthis point, were this a visual or audio (or, indeed an audio-visual) medium, there would be a lengthy montage here of all the (apparently too subtle) hints Aziraphale has dropped to Crowley over the last six millennia or so indicating that he is The Keeper of all the divine forbidden knowledge. Including, but not limited to, the angelic names of every demon. It’s a lot of meaningful looks and subtextual conversations. Things like that. The first time was when Aziraphale asked Crowley his name in the wall of Eden. If Crowley had been paying slightly more attention he would have realised that all angels knew all other angels (even the fallen ones) by name on sight. Theoretically no angel or demon should ever have to introduce themselves to any other angel or demon. As it was Crowley was trying to convey (and would spend several millennia doing so) that his admiration for Aziraphale’s wayward flaming sword was only partially for the actual flaming sword. Aziraphale would not fully understand this until February of 1973 AD when he came across an article published in The Advocate magazine which he and Crowley had both helped create ten years earlier and were avid readers of. Fed up with Aziraphale’s continuing incomprehension of his first flirtation, Crowley had penned the article himself. This brought to a close the complex masterstroke that was his proudest achievement and which left the M25 in its dust.

Crowley was no different from any other demon in that he didn’t remember who he had been when he was an angel. He remembered certain things, like generally being part of angelic society. He didn’t remember his own name or any details about himself. Crucially he didn’t remember the people he associated with. He remembered the ones who were now demons as their demonic selves, but he had no memory of which of the angels # he’d associated with. There were just gaps where they were supposed to be. There were lots of gaps where current angels were supposed to be. Big ones, little ones, middle sized ones. And one gaping one.

Crowley, did eventually work it out. It was a bit after the Nonpocalypse and Aziraphale had accidentally mentioned something he shouldn’t have memory of earlier in the day. They’d been dining at The Savoy and Crowley was reminiscing about how he’d introduced Oscar Wilde to the place, dropping a subtle suggestion that it would be a good place to bring a lover.

They were in bed at Crowley’s flat at two in the morning when he’d sat bolt upright. Crowley’s familiar weight suddenly lifting off his chest had woken Aziraphale.

When Crowley told him that he knew Aziraphale was The Keeper and asked what his angelic name had been. Aziraphale had told him:

_ Malachi, Angel of Ineffability _ .

* * *

*And a set of subordinate things that followed on directly from said thing.

+ While many of Aziraphale’s subtle hints to Crowley are intentional (and, frankly he’s astounded he’s gotten away with some of them) some of them are not.

# Who were still angels.


	6. And One: Amamus*

Aziraphale was a language man. Wherever he spent more than a few days he learn the language. He spoke most of them to some degree. With very few exceptions, every language that has ever been spoken or created on earth lived on in Aziraphale’s brain to some degree. There was language in his brain that survived nowhere else in the universe. His favorite was the one now known as Old-English. It had a sort of mad mosaic quality from all the bits it had collected from other languages. It so rarely followed its own rules. It reminded him distinctly of Crowley.

Crowley on the other hand didn't see the point in learning languages individually. He learned some of them though. The Englishes, Latin, Klingon… While he appreciated his angel’s love and reverence for languages he didn't share his desire to learn all of them. #

There was one phrase they both knew in every language, without exception.

_ I love you. _

They had their favorites, of course. Ones that rolled off the tongue. Pleasant tasting ones. Ones that purred and growled. Ones that were smooth as silk. Gnashing ones and melodic ones. There was a way to say the words for any situation. They'd invented some of them.

* * *

 

*In Latin: ‘We love’ I've used this because it makes me feel a bit clever.

+ Angels, fallen or not, understood and we're understood by all other beings (Incidentally this is how he can traumatise his house plants so effectively). It takes no small amount of effort to  _ not _ do this.

# While he did not speak every language humanity had ever come up with, Crowley still spoke more languages than any human who ever lived.


End file.
